Memeorandum

September 23, 2012

Winding Down In Iraq, Responsibly Or Otherwise

In a Sunday shocker, the NY Times criticizes Obama's handling of the wind-down in Iraq. Obama's domestic political goals were repeatedly put ahead of our objectives in Iraq, with gloomy consequences there:

In the case of Iraq, the American goal has been to leave a stable and representative government, avoid a power vacuum that neighboring states and terrorists could exploit and maintain sufficient influence so that Iraq would be a partner or, at a minimum, not an opponent in the Middle East.

But the Obama administration has fallen frustratingly short of some of those objectives.

Let's shift to a bit of light comedy:

The attempt by Mr. Obama and his senior aides to fashion an extraordinary power-sharing arrangement between Mr. Maliki and Mr. Allawi never materialized. Neither did an agreement that would have kept a small American force in Iraq to train the Iraqi military and patrol the country’s skies. A plan to use American civilians to train the Iraqi police has been severely cut back. The result is an Iraq that is less stable domestically and less reliable internationally than the United States had envisioned.

The story of these efforts has received little attention in a nation weary of the conflict in Iraq, and administration officials have rarely talked about them. This account is based on interviews with many of the principals, in Washington and Baghdad.

A nation weary of Iraq and a press wary of criticising Obama has led to this.

Let me cut to the SOFA, the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by Bush which called for all US troops to be out by the end of 2011. It was widely believed that an extension would be sought and agreed, but that didn't happen, and thereby hangs a tale:

As the process of forming a new Iraqi government dragged on, the Obama administration began in January 2011 to turn its attention to negotiating an agreement that would enable American forces to stay beyond 2011.

The first talks the Americans had were among themselves. Pentagon officials had gotten an earful from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, which were worried that the United States was pulling back from the region. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates favored leaving 16,000 troops to train the Iraqi forces, prepare them to carry out counterterrorism missions, protect Iraqi airspace, tamp down Arab and Kurdish tensions and to maintain American influence.

But the White House, which was wary of big military missions and also looking toward Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign, had a lower number in mind. At a meeting on April 29, Thomas E. Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, asked Mr. Gates whether he could accept up to 10,000 troops. Mr. Gates agreed.

Concerned that decisions were being made without careful consideration of all the military factors, Admiral Mullen sent a classified letter to Mr. Donilon that recommended keeping 16,000 troops. “In light of the risks noted above and the opportunities that might emerge, that is my best military advice to the president,” he wrote. He added that the recommendation was supported by Gen. Lloyd Austin, the American commander in Iraq, and Gen. James N. Mattis, head of Central Command, which has responsibility for the Middle East.

Admiral Mullen’s letter arrived with a thud at the White House. An angry Mr. Donilon complained about it in a phone call to Michèle A. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy. But she responded that Admiral Mullen had a professional responsibility to provide his independent advice. She did not see her role as ensuring that only politically acceptable advice was provided to the White House. Mr. Donilon declined to be interviewed, and his spokesman insisted that his discussions with the Pentagon concerned military issues, not politics.

Mr. Obama overruled Admiral Mullen, setting the stage for the negotiations over the troops.

So Obama opened with a low bid meant to be popular here in the US. However, even that was eventually scaled back as negotiations with the Iraqis, and within the Administration, dragged on:

The White House, meanwhile, wanted to avoid any perception that it was chasing after a deal to keep troops in Iraq after promising that combat forces would be brought home. By August, White House aides were pressing to scale back the mission and to reopen the issue of how many troops might be needed.

Mrs. Clinton and Leon E. Panetta, who succeeded Mr. Gates as the defense secretary, argued that talks should continue and that the goal, as before, should be to keep a force of up to 10,000.

On Aug. 13, Mr. Obama settled the matter in a conference call in which he ruled out the 10,000 troop option and a smaller 7,000 variant. The talks would proceed but the size of the force the United States might keep was shrunk: the new goal would be a continuous presence of about 3,500 troops, a rotating force of up to 1,500 and half a dozen F-16’s.

But there was no agreement. Some experts say that given the Iraqis’ concerns about sovereignty, and Iranian pressure, the politicians in Baghdad were simply not prepared to make the hard decisions that were needed to secure parliamentary approval. Others say the Iraqis sensed the Americans’ ambivalence and were being asked to make unpopular political decisions for a modest military benefit.

Who knows? But by the end, we were asking for so little that it hardly made sense for either side to exert itself.

The Times is a bit gloomy on the result:

The White House insisted that the collapse of the talks was not a setback. “As we reviewed the 10,000 option, we came to the conclusion that achieving the goal of a security partnership was not dependent on the size of our footprint in-country, and that stability in Iraq did not depend on the presence of U.S. forces,” a senior Obama administration said.

It is too soon to fully assess that prediction. But tensions have increased to the point that Mr. Barzani has insisted Mr. Maliki be replaced and Iraq’s lone Sunni vice president has fled to Turkey to avoid arrest.

Without American forces to train and assist Iraqi commandos, the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active in Iraq and is increasingly involved in Syria. With no American aircraft to patrol Iraqi airspace, Iraq has become a corridor for Iranian flights of military supplies to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, American officials say. It is also a potential avenue for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, something the White House is laboring to avoid.

Obama may yet manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq while expanding the quagmire in Afghanistan. Hard to believe the same guy who got lots of the asbestos out of Altgeld Gardens couldn't succeed here.

FWIW: Contemporaneous Times reporting expressedsurprise that a deal had not been reached.

In the case of Iraq, the American goal has been to leave a stable and representative government, avoid a power vacuum that neighboring states and terrorists could exploit and maintain sufficient influence so that Iraq would be a partner or, at a minimum, not an opponent in the Middle East.

But the Obama administration has fallen frustratingly short of some of those objectives.

Watching the Sunday Shows. Did anything bad happen overseas this week? Did the White House climb down about lying to the press and the American people?

News for Bill Kristol. This event is not about foreign policy. No one cares. What it is about however is competence and credibility. By not going to briefings, by going to Vegas, by lying about the Benghazi terrorist attack for a week, it is about putting the campaign above national security. That does resonate because it encapsulates the entire Obama presidency and why it is a failure.

On a gloomy note, one way to view the sacrifice of American blood and treasure in Iraq is to consider it an experiment.
On the one hand, if enough effort was exerted, it might be possible to create a beacon of hope, tolerance, etc in the Muslim world.
On the other hand, perhaps that vision is a fool's errand and the only alternative is a fight to the death.
Stanley Kurtz covers this ground (though in truth focused on Iran) in this 2006 piece.http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/218419/hawkish-gloom/stanley-kurtz#

For Juan Williams, the national tracking polls are tied. Advantage Romney. You can obsess all you want on state polls but if Romney wins with anywhere above .75 of 1 percent over Obama he wont lose the electoral college. Hard to figure how winning with over 750,000 votes or more will not lead to victory given the big Obama advantage in popular for in California and New York

On another web site, a resident libturd taunts "why wasn't Bush invited to speak at the Repub convention?".
It is the work of a moment to inquire why the Dem convention did not invite recent top-ticket candidates like Gore, Lieberman and Edwards to NCarolina. And why was Hilary on an urgent diplo mission to Upper North Fontana or wherever it was she went to hide out...
Still, I am curious too. Did Barbara or W speak? (Live, or on tape?) Are there public explanations why not, if they didn't? Are there plausible unofficial explanations?

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF) U.S. CASUALTY STATUS
FATALITIES AS OF: September 21, 2012, 10 a.m. EDT
Total US Military & DoD Civilian KIA 4,422
Total US Military & DoD Civilian WIA 31,926
Total Coalition Military and Official Civilian and Contractor civilian
--add a couple thousand more KIA
--add up to twenty thousand WIA

~~

Now the resident is snatching (snatched!) defeat from the jaws of that victory, earned with the blood, sweat and tears listed in the above butcher's bill.

Have I mentioned recently how strongly, thoroughly, unforgivingly & emphatically I detest, nay--HATE, this administration and the cabal associated with it?

~~

BTW - WRT the Sunday news shows, some time ago I had stopped watching any except on occasion FNS. I thought last week's show was about as disgusting as I had ever watched, but thought I'd try one more time this week. Cretinous carp-artists. All of them.

~~

Twelve days ago we witnessed in horror is not also shame the repudiation of eleven year's hard slogging by those that love, serve, protect and defend this Great Republic.

Sort of a mirror image of what happened in the 20s, although the Sunni tribes didn't have the demographics, their organization, typified by the proto Fascist Golden Square movement, and later te Baath, froze out the Shia and Kurds, out of the professions, and public life in general, it also explains, as Battuta pointed out, how the Communist Party there, was heavily Shiite, and
later the rise of the Da'wa, from the Baqr clan.

Not with those splits. You're not accounting for the 8% undecided. A sample weighted 35.6R, 35.3D and 29.1I with the splits indicated returns a 46-46 result. Ras isn't running a D+4.

Wrt the current post - the aftermath of OIF should result in cost savings in our future military dealings with Mahometan savages. The idiocy of the Pottery Barn construct will be replaced with a modified IKEA construct - Reassembly Will Be Required. That is, if stacking rubble can be considered reassembly.

Latest Obama campaign TV ad is focused on the economy and how terrible it was when he took over in 2009. Show's how we lost quadrillion jobs and how private industry has added 4.3 million jobs and how all Obama wants to do is raise the taxes on gillionaires to help grow the middle class. The voice over shows ocean front mansions, corporate jets, Wall Street. Then how that mean Romney's only plan is to lower those taxes, de-regulate those evil banks and get rid of grandma's social security. All the while they are showing JEF sitting in the oval office working his ass off 24/7 with papers pile up to his shoulders.

I think this is a huge mistake to run on an economy that 16% of the population have either lost faith in or are still mad as hell as to what has happened to their families, their homes and their dreams. RR needs to do some political Jui-juitsu and make them pay for being so callous and wrong. The 16% out of work or who have permanently given up deserve so.

Well Rick, the Pottery Barn formulation, assumes that Baathism wasn't like the explosive laced
concrete at the stadium, in the latest Batman film, of course, Bandar's tennis partner, among others ignore that the Sauds have built a similar
flimsy foundation, except their wolves blow from
the inside.

I've been pounding the drum about Obama's losing the peace -- and a game changing ally in the heart of the Middle East -- for so long, I've got almost nothing left to say. Along with everything else, that failure, too, was already predictable when he came out of his original, pre-election meet and greet in Iraq. He has unilaterally turned a hard won victory into a tragic sacrifice.

Gibbs has perfected the big lie to an extent even Goebbels and Lenin would be giving standing ovations. Baghdad Bob just lost his job as poster boy and Susan Rice is taking copious notes as they watch that interview.

Whatever did you think this bunch would do in Iraq? Actually, we got off "easy" thus far (knock on wood). These were the traitors that undermined and opposed everything about the WOT and did everything they could to harm the war effort.

Had you forgotten Vietnam?

Never forget: they Hate the West; they hate the USA; they are on foreign payrolls.

They wish to bring it all down. They are well on their way to succeeding.

They have not just undone everything accomplished since 911; they have undone 60 some years of progress (or at least a saving holding pattern) in the ME. It is hard to see how the Islamicists have not won the War on Terror.

This is an intentional. It is not "incompetence" as their agenda is wholly other than any other by which you would gauge "competence".

And never forget that Obama is just a figure head in this. He is a front man.

ANd if the USA ever "recovers" the damage will be long lasting. Who would be so stupid as to ever trust us again? Who would respect a country that would be ruled over by the likes of Obama and the Democrat Party?

Who would respect a country that has destroyed itself by believing such idiotic rhetoric from a pack of obvious liars, traitors and thieves?

But thus far it seems that America has not lifted an eyebrow about it all--they seem completely unaware of what is happening. It is as though the WTC was a old tv series or something.

We shall presently see this Nov. if this is really true.

My guess is that a majority of us are too emasculated, browbeaten, stupid, ignorant, feckless, irresponsible, or deracinated for it to even register at all, let alone cause them concern.

Everything good about the USA is being destroyed right before our eyes in an handful of years by the worst sort of mediocrities one could cram into an auditorium. What is amazing is that such ridiculous excuses for human beings could pull this off where so many strong and mighty foes have failed.

Outrage after outrage, none of which would have even been imaginable even 4 or 5 years ago.

Just wait until they blow up the dollar. Just wait until QE3 wipes out the last remaining wealth of the middle class. The Great Depression will look like a picnic.

Beyond belief what the Left has accomplished these last 10 years.

And yet Obama stands a fighting chance in this election.

This alone should tell you everything you need to know about The Republic.

WOO HOO - "empty chair day" still lives. Just went to do my weekly grocery shopping and two houses down from me, out on the lawn - a small US flag, and empty chair and a sign attached. It is breezy today and I couldn't see the full sign, but it began "Obama." I am sure it was a pithy message. (Neighbor I rarely see out and about, a gent about my age.) How cool is that?

LOL, rse! I guess that should have been nothing new to say. The "nothing left" part is really about how suddenly pointless it seems to sift through my archives on Iraq to pull up an apropos cut and paste, for the gazillionth time.

Squaredance,
I know you sometimes tick people off here, but when I read your post I thought it was Sandy Daze posting. When you are on target, the payload is measured in megatons.
Of course, it can be a bit hard to live with.

Not providing for the undecided (as there is no none of the above and historically third parties get at best 1% in toto ), THEN with a 12% differential or 56% to 44% you get a +3.5% for the Republicans.

If the work that remains to be done is getting Republicans from 84% to 95%, I think that the ground game Reince Pribus has put together gets the job done.

What I find hard to live with is his incessant hectoring and lecturing of "you people" like Jane and Janet and clarice about how they need to get cracking at rolling back the leftist tide when for all we know he's in his boxers in his basement ranting 24/7 only on the internet.

I also find the condescending twaddle about how no one here, save him, has any comprehension about just exactly what the left is up to fairly insufferable.

Lastly, a very, very little of his amalgam of King James Old Testamentisms and Zane Grey New Riders of the Purple Prose hyperbole goes a very long way.

Yep, the left wants to bring it all down, and to the degree they have succeeded, I am appalled and dismayed. Sometimes I have a perverse desire to just let it all go. . . not fight the fight for this Great Republic, just give in to every o.n.e. of the left's desires.

Talk about Pottery Barn, Rick? There'd be some rubble needing cleaning up, and IKEA would not be the model I'd use. And BTW - can we throw the Powell doctrine "you break it you own it" out finally, like tossing that racist panderer out once-and-for-all? Puh-lease? If I never hear his name or a side/slight reference to him again, it will be too soon.

But I digress.

Where I think your assessment is wrong, squaredance, is in the response of this citizens of this Great Republic. I'm out of the street knocking on doors every other day at a minimum. Cold calls, they're not easy, and we're targeting (if I may use that word) addresses which we're not certain about, addresses where we think we might pry away support from the resident. Addresses which are more likely than not to be at best ambivalent, if not hostile. Purposely so, as we do not want to waste time and resources on "high probability" votes, i.e. votes we think are already in the bank.

Guess what ? At least in the areas I am going in--areas that by a significant margin went for the resident the last time around, there is virtually no/No/NO/NO support for him this time around. Moreover there is strong support reflected for ABO and that support is inclined strongly toward Mr Romney, even though a year ago many were not, as I was not, including him in my number 1 or 2 choice.

The other area I think you go off the rails is in your characterization of the relationship with the MENA and the muslims. Squaredance, the reason why it was kept relatively in check these last 60 years, and actually you are wrong there, it was perhaps kept in check during years 1945 through approximately 1985, and after that it started to turn south again (owing to muslim belief in its new potency derived from oil revenue) (and the 45-85 era being characterized, more importantly by the Cold War).

They are playing at a religious war and it is a war that they will not win, they have not succeeded in the past and they will not succeed going forward. Sure, we'll take some hits and the hits we'll take, going forward, will make what has happened so far, seem relatively minor in comparison. But, at the end of the day, they will not and cannot prevail.

Although I am sorely disgusted with the resident and his cabal in letting Iraq slip away.
BUT, understand too that those +/- 6K KIA and +/- 50K WIA reflect losses of probably at least an order of magnitude on the other side, if not more. Also, we removed a festering sore in the MENA, as Barnett said "a bad actor with multiple priors" he had to be taken down regardless.

So, I weep for what might have been, an Iraq in 60 years which would be roughly analogous in its MENA stature as today's Germany is in Europe. But, I do not weep for what was accomplished.

We went into Iraq, kicked ass and took names. After Somalia, too many thought America had its testicles shot off. Nope, and by the way, we fought Iraq as a side-show to everything else we were doing (shuttle, part-D, econ recovery). . .

Looks bleak now, particularly when Benghazi consulate is rolled. It would look a lot less bleak to those that wish us ill, if & when we apply the B-61 disinfectant to particular trouble spots.

And, if we have to do so, I have no doubt that a President Palin or a President Ryan would so order.

I agree with you about Sandy, Pagar, but then you ain't no slouch yourself.. :)

Sandy, you are what my dad would call someone he looked up to and admired - one helluva guy. And my dad was also one helluva guy. He died in 1995. He would be heartbroken to witness what the One has done to our country the past four years. He was a WWII vet; Army Air Force. He would be here in the trenches with all of us, however, if he were still alive.

We'll begin the rebuilding and restoring process starting in January, 2013. We owe it to the vets and to our grandkids. You betcha.